September 12, 2007

DOJ Immigration Office Gets New Boss

Kevin Ohlson, a veteran Department of Justice prosecutor and chief of staff to a former deputy attorney general, has been named director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The Falls Church, Va. based office oversees the nation’s more than 200 judges in 53 immigration courts.

Ohlson is no stranger to the immigration arena. He already served as the office’s deputy director from 2003 until the present and also was a member of the Board of Immigration Appeals, which reviews decisions by immigration judges. He was appointed to that post in January 2001.

He previously was chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder in the Clinton Administration. Coincidentally, Ohlson also was Holder’s spokesman while Holder was the District of Columbia’s U.S. Attorney in the 1990s.

A University of Virginia law school graduate, Ohlson became a federal prosecutor in 1989 and served as a military lawyer and paratrooper during Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.